Booker: Obamacare critical in addiction treatment

U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, was at Ocean Medical Center in Brick on Saturday to participate in a roundtable discussion about the opioid addiction crisis in Ocean County and throughout the United States.
Erik Larsen

BRICK – U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., came to ground zero of the opioid epidemic in his home state on Saturday to warn that a repeal of the Affordable Care Act could undermine the progress that has been made here in fighting the scourge.

“What expanding Medicaid did was allow about 1.3 million more Americans to get access to drug treatment services, which often families of modest income will have a hard time struggling for,” Booker said at a roundtable discussion on opioid abuse at Ocean Medical Center.

The panel was chaired by Ocean County Prosecutor Joseph D. Coronato and attended by law enforcement officials, medical professionals, civic leaders, recovering opioid addicts and the family of an addict who died less than a year ago from an overdose.

Booker said the repeal of Obamacare would have significantly impeded efforts to battle the addiction crisis and stripped access to treatment for those who need it most.

He said the ACA was bringing billions of dollars into New Jersey and that the controversial health care law should be strengthened so that treatment options are expanded to New Jerseyans battling addiction.

“About a third of us get our health insurance through our jobs,” Booker said. “Before the Affordable Care Act, those workplace plans did not cover services for drug addiction. … And that’s very problematic if the central services of the plan doesn’t cover drug treatment.

"We used to have a major problem in our state before the Affordable Care Act with just again, our taxpayer dollars — billions of them — going to charity care,” he said.

Brick Township Police Chief James Riccio touted the department’s “Blue H.A.R.T.” (Heroin Addiction Recovery and Treatment) program. Riccio explained that since January, addicts have been welcome to walk into police headquarters to ask for treatment without fear that they will be charged with a drug offense.

“I think we’re about 200 people since Jan. 11,” Riccio said. “We realize it can be successful.”

The problem is money, the police chief said.

Despite the ACA, many of the people who want help have no health insurance. Therefore, the program continues to rely on charity to finance the treatment.

“So what I believe we need is, for programs like this to succeed and to continue to succeed: we need money,” Riccio said. “We knew there would be probably trust issues in the beginning. This didn’t sound logical that people addicted were going to walk into a police station and expect to get the help we’re offering. But we did it, we’ve overcome that, and word is getting out.”

Susan Covington of Brick talked about her grandson. Brandon Blaze Nikola Jr., 26, had been living with his grandmother and her husband, John, for about three years and was thought to be clean when he suffered a fatal overdose last October.

“It’s $10 a bag for heroin, and they come and they sell them in bundles of 10, which are wrapped in these little rubber bands,” Covington said. “They buy $100, they buy 10 highs. Brandon used all 10 that night. In three minutes, he was dead, and it was mixed with Fentanyl, which I understand is the killer drug right there. Fentanyl mixed with heroin is absolutely going to kill you, that’s the end of the story.”

Booker observed that so many Americans were dying from overdoses related to opioid abuse that it was driving down the life expectancy numbers for the United States.

Coronato pointed out that Ocean County was the first jurisdiction in New Jersey to authorize law enforcement officers to carry Narcan, also known as naloxone, which serves as an antidote for opioid overdoses and has since saved countless lives.

Dean Q. Lin, president of Ocean Medical Center, said statistics backup that claim.

“In New Jersey, over the past three years, we’ve administered 20,000 Narcan treatments through the police and the EMS. That translates to 23 people per day,” Lin said.

Dr. Ramon Solhkhah, chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune, said Monmouth and Ocean counties accounted for 20 percent of all hospital admissions related to opioid abuse in the state.

Depending on the day, health complications from substance abuse represented 10 to 30 percent of all emergency room visits, he said.

“If you think about all the patients with addiction who come in, because they have chest pain because they did propane, because they’ve got liver problems because of their alcohol abuse or because they’re actually intoxicated,” Solhkhah said.

“This is not a partisan issue,” Booker said. “This is not even a geographic issue, it’s not just affecting the Northeast. This is a national crisis of epic proportions, and I’m attacking it every way possible.”

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Susan Covington of Brick holds a photo of her grandson Brandon Nikola who died of an overdose in October of 2016. Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) attends a roundtable discussion at Ocean Medical Center with Ocean County Prosecutor Joe Coronato, the DEA and health care professionals to discuss the opioid crisis.
Brick, NJ
Saturday, July 29, 2017
@dhoodhood
Doug Hood